Almost 30,000 People Lost TennCare Coverage in May But Near-Record Enrollment Has Remained

by Jon Styf

 

Tennessee saw 27,000 lose Medicaid coverage in May as the state continues its process of redetermining TennCare eligibility following the end of federal COVID-19 pandemic rules.

Those rules blocked states from the mandated process of determining eligibility between March 2020 to March 31. TennCare began the eligibility determination process in April.

The recently released May numbers showed 83,308 TennCare recipients were up for renewal with 46,215 remaining eligible. Of those who were deemed ineligible, 17,734 failed to return the renewal packet and 1,640 did not send requested information while 7,663 filled out the paperwork and were deemed ineligible and instead sent to the federal marketplace for insurance.

TennCare went into the state of emergency with 1.3 million members and expects to reach a peak of 1.8 million members before April 1 with TennCare expecting enrollment to end up near the 1.3 million members it was before the pandemic.

The most recently available enrollment numbers showed that 1.8 million were still enrolled in July.

Overall, TennCare has examined 163,392 recipients’ eligibility in the first two months of redetermination with 92,333 retaining coverage in the updated numbers and 57,072 losing coverage along with 13,987 who are still pending.

Nearly 60,000 of those who were renewed so far were children under the age of 18 while less than 20,000 lost coverage.

More adults ages 19 to 64 have lost coverage than have retained it with more than 30,000 losing coverage and more than 25,000 retaining it.

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Jon Styf is an award-winning editor and reporter of The Center Square who has worked in Illinois, Texas, Wisconsin, Florida and Michigan in local newsrooms over the past 20 years, working for Shaw Media, Hearst and several other companies.